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Apple-iPhoneX

Apple tree launched its refreshed iPhone 8 and 10th-ceremony-edition iPhone 10 yesterday. Samsung, of course, launched the latest Milky way Note 8 a few weeks agone. Only how do the devices compare with each other, and which i is the correct choice for you lot? Let'due south accept a look.

It's impossible to cleanly compare the specs on an iPhone versus an Android device thanks to underlying differences between the phone operating systems and the hardware choices of their manufacturers. Samsung has historically prioritized higher core counts and CPUs that practise much less work per cycle than their Apple counterparts. That's still the case today, with Apple's new A11 Bionic SoC, merely the ratios have changed: The new A11 SoC is a pair of high functioning cores (up to 25 percent faster) and a quad of high-efficiency cores (up to seventy percent faster). This suggests Apple tree might exist downclocking the cluster compared with its dual-core A10 predecessor, but has added cores to compensate.

We've seen different reports on RAM; some sites accept said 3GB while others have said nosotros don't know this yet. 3-4GB for Apple tree is a safe estimate here, so we've included the 3GB report in our tabular array below. Historically, Android devices tend to field more RAM than Apple does, though the Notation'south 6GB is probably overkill for the hardware at this stage. Then again, phones tend to last longer than they used to, and so stocking up a bit on retentivity probably isn't a problem, either.

iPhone-Chart

Click to enlarge.

In raw specs, the Galaxy Note eight wins on screen size, resolution, and expandability. RAM is also a likely win, though we can't confirm that yet. We'll look for Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate to sound off on the screen technologies involved earlier we crown a winner on overall quality and colour balance, merely both Samsung and Apple have a potent track record here. No thing which company wins this detail comparison, you aren't getting a bad display either way.

The iPhone X is lighter than the Galaxy Note 8, faster in single-threaded performance (this is a guarantee, given Apple's long-term history of pushing unmarried-threaded performance and relatively few CPU cores), and with a new GPU core that will likely offer excellent performance (again, given Apple tree's typically strong piece of work, here).

But in a lot of ways, what device you choice between iOS or Android is based less on the intrinsic characteristics of the telephone and more about the apply-cases you want to enable. Do you have a use for a stylus and desire removable storage with a headphone jack? The Note 8 (or a Milky way S8) are your devices of choice. Interested in Apple's AirPods or its AI processor? That'due south going to shove y'all to the iPhone side of the fence. And of grade there are questions most whether  facial recognition will work equally well as Apple tree claims it will, or whether the AI processor inside the phone can really exist used for something useful. Absent a great deal more than technical data and applied use cases, we can't evaluate these criteria birthday. Even the improved camera features need to be checked in diverse light conditions to test how their capabilities in real life relate to what they tin can practise on paper.

What strikes me well-nigh the mod high-cease telephone business is how little improvement nearly new features offer to the core feel of using the device. The Galaxy Note 8, or iPhone 8 and iPhone X are, I'chiliad certain, faster and sexier than the Galaxy Notation vii 6 or the iPhone 7. But for the most function, even their improvements are just iterations on an existing formula. Digital assitants and facial recognition are stuck somewhere between "handy" and "revolutionary," useful in plenty cases to justify their addition (to some customers, at least), only not really disquisitional to the function of the platform.

Of course, when you lot're in the market for a new device, having Samsung and Apple build actually good iterations on rather boring platforms is exactly what you may want; not everybody wants to re-learn how to utilize a slice of hardware when the new version ships. Other capabilities, like Apple'due south new AI co-processor, could prove useful over time.

Right at present, I'd debate the nigh useful thing Apple tree announced is a $50 price cut on the iPhone SE, bringing it to just $349 for a 32GB device with a yet-fast processor and excellent camera. On the Android side of the equation, I'd say the all-time trends in that ecosystem today are the way midrange and low-cost devices have improved year-on-year — not the way Samsung, LG, or HTC (not really) manage to raise flagship phone prices and marginally amend features every 12 months.